Cup final for Newtowne FC despite challenging season

A victory over the Ballymena and Provincial Premier Division champions in the cup final on Friday would cap a remarkable turnaround for the Limavady outfit after an extremely trying beginning to the season.

Manager Michael Burns explained: “We lost 10 players and the manager before the beginning of the season.” He added: ““After an indifferent start, we clicked into gear. You’re talking about 16 and 17 year olds for a lot of the time.”

The faith in youth appears to have paid off for Newtone though because despite beginning pre-season with less than half a dozen players, the local team are now in a cup final after finishing a highly respectable third place in the league standings.

Michael Burns explains: “I was the assistant manager at the time, although I had been a manager for five years before hand with Newtowne and we won nearly 20 trophies during that time.

“When I came back to Newtowne, what we done was we invested in the youth. We just started to rebuild. It was a bit of a change to go from having just won a treble the previous year to trying to sort of start again with the young players.

“After an indifferent start, we clicked into gear. You’re talking about 16 and 17 year olds for a lot of the time. Among them are boys like Stephen Duffy, a great lad we brought down from Derry. The rest of them are all local, Limavady lads - the likes of Evan Donnell, he was 17 when we brought him in as well; you have Mark McClean, who was 17; you have Jamie McElwee. They were the young lads that sort of came in. To be honest, our age group is around the 21, 22, 23 sort of age so we’re a very young team.

“After the beginning we started to become very competitive. We finished third place in the league there and to be honest I was a wee bit disappointed. It was there for us - probably not to be champions but at least to be runners up. I was disappointed because we went on a run at one stage winning 10 out of 11 games . That’s not to take away from Brantwood, the team from Belfast who won it, because the league table doesn’t lie. They were the best team. Obviously the youth comes into it in terms of getting that consistency.

“What it shows is a really promising sign of the way things are going. Barring Stephen Duffy, who is a really exceptional player, these are all Limavady lads. Him and Evan Donnell, both of them. Evan is a big lad and Stephen’s stature isn’t like that. It’s incredible how well he’s done. Stephen’s even chipped in with nine or ten goals.

“Another one is Ryan Logue, who is still only in his early twenties but he’s already got four or five years experience behind him.

“You add in to all that the fact that some of our more experienced players have been out for a lot of the season. You take Billy Dorans, he would be our out-and-out goalscorer - he missed a lot of games. You take Stephen O’Hara, he would be our out-and-out centre-half, he only started about eight or nine games.

“I’ll tell you what it is - it is having the faith in the young players and being prepared to play them and being prepared for when they make mistakes. We have signed boys like Aaron McGregor who was over there with Rangers, for instance, and we have Ricky Keane and Decky Logue who have been with us since Christmas. You also have Gerard Logue who has been called up to play for the Northern Ireland regions team so I think that’s a sign of how well we’ve been doing.

“You have to hand it to Brandwood, they are a good team. Obviously we’re the underdogs because Brantwood won the league, they’re the champions, but it means there is no pressure on us.

“At the beginning we never thought we would be in a cup final and that we would finish third. Even though I knew the ability of the boys I had my eye really on next season but here we are already. It’s going to be a tight game and we’re looking forward to it.”The match is to be played at teh Chimney Corner FC grounds in County Antrim this Friday (May 23) at 7pm.